In Sickness and Health
by rumpelsnorcack
Summary: When Rose gets sick, the Doctor panics


_A/N: this is my first ever Doctor Who fic, though I've been writing Harry Potter for a while. It was written for the April Support Stacie auction. This is a really great cause and has generated some wonderful fics in all sorts of fandoms. Check it out on LJ._

**In Sickness and Health**

**.**

A cough rang out in the stillness of the TARDIS. The Doctor raised his head like a hound scenting prey. Rose quickly lowered her hand, putting on an innocent look.

'You're sick,' the Doctor said, his voice heavy with fear. Rose rolled her eyes at his, now familiar, overreaction to every slightest human ailment.

'No, I'm not. I'm fine. See ...' Rose jumped up and down on the spot, trying to distract the Doctor. He was momentarily mesmerised by the way she jiggled as she jumped until she stopped and bend over, unable to keep her rasping breaths from escalating into a coughing fit.

'You _are_ sick! I need to get you to a doctor ...' He pushed her into a nearby chair, grabbed a blanket and almost smothered Rose with it as he tucked it around her. Ignoring her protests that she was fine, he began babbling. 'Now, where should I take you? Maybe Dr. Grugns on Hunnnnf? Oh, or Dr Snuferumpus over on Station 12 – she's a medical genius…'

Rose looked at him with a mixture of affection and exasperation. 'I don't need to see a doctor. I just need to rest and relax ... I'll just go to bed, I think.'

'Nonsense. That sounds like the beginnings of Quargan Spuffle disease and if so you have to see someone immediately.' He whirled in the middle of the room, running his hands through his hair as he tried to decide where to go. 'Hah! I have it. Hold tight Rose, I'll have you at a doctor soon.'

Sighing, Rose sat back and allowed the Doctor to pilot them away. She had learned through trial and error that arguing with him when he was worried for her health was futile.

With his most winningly belligerent air, the Doctor was staring in disbelief at the man in the white coat on the other side of the desk.

'You're honestly trying to convince me ... me! That there's nothing wrong with Rose?'

'Yes, that's honestly what I'm telling you. She has a minor cold and will be fine with a little extra fluid intake.'

'I need a second opinion on that. Come on Rose, these early twentieth century doctors obviously don't know what they're talking about.'

Casting an apologetic smile at the clearly confused man in the room with them, Rose followed the Doctor back to the TARDIS.

'Is this really necessary, Doctor? I'm fine. I hardly even have a cough left.'

'Yes, completely necessary. Human bodies are so frail that anything can just carry them off.' As he spoke he twiddled a few dials and launched them into space again. Rose sighed. Dr Wilkins was the fourth doctor she had been forced to visit and they'd all said the same thing. The Doctor was determined, however, and Rose knew she would get no peace until he heard what he wanted to hear. She resolved to handle this next doctor differently, just so she could get home, curl up in bed and get some longed-for sleep.

'Aha! We're here. Maybe Queen Elizabeth II's personal physician will be more reasonable.'

Rose dragged herself to her feet and walked into this latest doctor's office. Like all the rest, this one looked shocked to see them casually wandering into his consulting room. He recovered well, rising to his feet and shaking the Doctor's hand.

'Doctor, it's been a while. What can I do for you today?'

'Weeeeeeell, you see, Rose here is sick and as good as I am at most things, making her better isn't one of my strongest skills. You need to diagnose her illness and cure her so we can be good as new again.' The Doctor grinned at the man behind the desk and sat down with an expectant look on his face. Raising one eyebrow at Rose, who shrugged in resignation, the physician began examining her. After looking into her mouth, checking her glands and saying 'hmmm' a lot in a serious voice, the doctor sat down and surveyed the Doctor over folded hands.

'What makes you think there's something wrong with Rose, Doctor?' he asked in a gentle voice.

'Well, look at her—' The Doctor waved a hand in her direction. 'She's all pale and coughy and ... and her head feels clammy. See ...' He reached out his hand to feel her forehead but before he could carry through the physician said, 'Doctor! Listen to me,' and he pulled his hand back, looking expectantly at the man sitting across from him.

'Rose is fine. She has a cold, but she'll be fine. However!' he added as he saw the Doctor open his mouth to protest. 'You need to look after her.' Rose mouthed, 'thank you,' to him as he smiled at her.

'Look after her,' the Doctor said carefully. 'Right. Done. What should I do?'

'Just let her sleep; cook meals for her and keep her fluids up.'

The Doctor leapt to his feet, thanked the doctor profusely and all but dragged Rose out of the room behind him.

Rose rolled her eyes and began undressing herself for bed as the Doctor raced around the TARDIS trying to find the very best of everything to help in his new mission to look after Rose. As he set a kettle to boil and pulled out enough hot water bottles to warm all of the patients in a small hospital, Rose silently sorted herself out. She managed to slide into bed with a sigh of blissful relief just as the Doctor arrived in the room with his arms laden.

'Ah! Good. You're in bed. Where you should be. Yes. Good.' He piled the water bottles on the bed and looked at Rose with an expectant expression, tugging on his ear lobe as he watched her.

Rose laughed as she saw how many bottles he expected her to use. 'I think I'll just take one, for now,' she said.

'What? What! The doctor said to keep you warm. One isn't enough to ...'

'One is plenty to keep me warm, honestly. I just ... I think I want to lie down and sleep for a bit.'

'Sleep. Yes, sleep is – yes, that was on the list of acceptable pursuits.' The Doctor nodded, an odd look on his face. If Rose didn't know better she would have thought it was fear. She smiled at him gently.

'I need sleep to get better,' she said and another coughing fit wracked her body so she slid down further into the bed. 'You could, maybe, cook something – for later.' Keeping her eyes open was a struggle, and Rose wasn't up to it. Her eyes drifted closed and after a moment the Doctor took his hands out of his pockets and turned away.

When Rose opened her eyes again several hours later she regretted that last statement. Surrounding her bed were several tables, all piled high with food. She had thought possibly some tomato soup would be wonderful, maybe with some toast to fill it out. But, she thought with a wry grin, that was what normal people did for the ill. The Doctor had never been normal. She looked to the side and caught his eye. That odd expression of fear was back, coupled with an infinite sadness. Rose felt her heart clench when she saw it. She smiled at him and struggled to sit up. The Doctor rushed to her side and helped her, using a caring, gentle touch that made Rose melt.

'Are you ... do you feel all right?' The Doctor asked anxiously. The hint of fear was clear in his voice, and while Rose didn't understand it, she responded instinctively by reaching out and squeezing his hand.

'I'm fine. I actually feel a bit better now.' Her voice was warm and the Doctor responded by squeezing her hand back. The touch electrified Rose. She knew how she felt about him; it was, after all, the reason she had fought so long and so hard to get back to him through the void. She didn't know how he felt about her, though. She looked around the room and grinned internally. Possibly, she was starting to get a good indication.

'Is there some soup in among all this?'

'Weeeell, I don't rightly know. I think there might be some in the back there. But look – roast pork, crackling ...' When Rose made a face, he veered onto another suggestion. 'Custard, maybe some fish fingers ... Ah!' He spun around and seized a tureen from one of the tables. 'Soup. Freshly made tomato soup. All yours.' He carefully poured some into a bowl and placed it on a tray which he then laid across Rose's legs. She smiled in gratitude and began eating.

After a few moments she could feel his eyes on her so she looked up. The expression of deep sadness was back as he watched her. She lifted her eyebrow at him in mute query and he smiled, the motion alien on his agonised face. After a second he broke the silence.

'I don't want to lose you,' he said and the ache was palpable in his voice. 'I lost you once and I just don't want to see you ...'

Rose laid down her spoon and said, 'I know. And I'm fine, really. It's only a cold.'

'This time it is. But one day it will be more. One day it will be ... cancer or old age or some terrifying alien disease your body isn't capable of dealing with.'

The Doctor perched on her bed, causing the soup to wobble on the tray alarmingly. Rose quickly set it right and looked back up at him.

'You can't go living in the future, Doctor. You of all people should know that. We're here now, I'm here now, and what I am right now is perfectly fine.' She tried to jolly him out of his mood but he still looked pensive and sad.

'I've had – feelings, deep feelings, for my companions before,' the Doctor said and Rose's heart began tripping in anticipation. She schooled her face and dragged her eyes away from his, focussing on eating the soup with more passion than she really felt. She could feel the Doctor's breath on her face as he continued. 'But it was never like this. I never worried so much about losing one of them. I just accepted it as part of my existence. People die, I move on.' He scrubbed his hands through his hair and over his face in a gesture of frustration so familiar that Rose felt tears pricking her eyes.

After a few moments Rose reached out a tentative hand to touch his face. 'You can't stop living, though, or stop me from living just because I might get hurt. If you're going to do that we may as well sit here in the TARDIS going nowhere.' She laughed as the Doctor's eyes glinted at the thought of keeping her in a small bubble-wrapped room. 'You know it wouldn't work. You'd be so bored and frustrated within a day and I can't live in a plastic bubble. There's no way to grow and change and be human if I'm stuck in a box, no matter how well decorated.'

The Doctor looked up slowly and what Rose finally saw in his eyes made her breath catch in her throat. He said, 'but I don't want to lose you, not after losing so much else ...'

Rose snorted, which mutated into another coughing fit that almost bounced the Doctor off his precarious perch on her bed. When she recovered she began to talk again, her voice hoarse with emotion and illness. 'Listen to yourself. You're going to lose me one day, it's something we have to live with.' The Doctor's face blanched and she saw him begin to shut himself off from her emotionally. Rose quickly reached out to grab his hand and forced him to look at her again. 'What you have to understand, though, is that's the reality for everyone. We all have to face the fact that those we,' she broke off and blushed before steeling herself to carry on, 'those we love won't always be here. You have it worse,' she added, cupping his face in her hands, 'but we all go through it. I know I'll probably live longer than my mum, but that doesn't make me try to put her in a box somewhere to keep her safe. Please don't do that to me.' Her eyes bore into his, trying to get him to face up to his emotions. 'I came back here, I _fought_ to come back here, so I could _live_ with you. Not so I could be suffocated in cotton wool.'

Suddenly, Rose realised how close her face was to the Doctor's. She could make out all the tiny imperfections, all the things that made her heart beat faster. She realised how real he was, not the perfect, alien figure, but a man – a man who was hurting. Her eyes flickered down to his lips and on impulse she leaned forward and pressed hers to them. The Doctor's eyes widened and he tried to pull back but Rose held his face firmly in her hands and deepened the kiss. Slowly he relaxed and kissed her back. His hands moved up to her shoulders and remained there when Rose reluctantly came up for air.

'There, see, that's living. Much better than being shut away and 'safe' don't you think?'

The Doctor laughed, still looking a little dumbfounded, but with an expression closer to his usual cheerful, slightly manic one.

'I like your idea of living.' He grinned and Rose laughed before coughing again and lying down.

'Okay, so you need to rest, yes. Fluids – ah yes, here's some water,' he smiled at her again, most of the previous tension having left his face. 'All that's left is food –'

'I ate some soup just before, remember?'

'That's not real food. You should try something better, like a banana. Bananas are very nutritious. Here.' He flourished one as he bustled around the room again and Rose smiled as she watched him. He was back to normal, and back to coddling her. But she could live with that now that he wasn't going overboard. One food type at a time she could deal with. Rose grinned to herself as she thought about the way in which she had calmed his fears about her mortality. She'd just have to remember that for next time, and there would be a next time, Rose knew – she'd make sure of that. She watched the Doctor careening around the room and finally caught his eye.

'What? Something funny?' he asked.

'Not at all. I was just wondering why I never thought of that way to get through to you before.' Rose laughed again at the expression on his face. 'It made you nicely speechless,' she said, beckoning him over. 'Want to see if it works again?'

The grin on the Doctor's face was all the answer Rose needed and as she kissed him again she knew that being sick was about the most alive she had ever felt. Smiling broadly against his lips, Rose pulled him closer, parting her lips slightly and inviting him to deepen the kiss. He obliged and they sank into each other, all thoughts of illness, mortality and food abandoned as they lost themselves in the moment.


End file.
